My birth name is highly difficult to compete with on social media. There are thousands of Rodriguez's, but after researching the various name combinations, this was one that I found easier to create a strong social media platform, and as you all know, social media is key to publication success, or any industry success.
This explains why some writers might like to use pseudonyms, but it doesn't explain why a literary agent would need one.
Also, I am a speaker against domestic violencem child abuse and sex trafficking--all of which are dangerous to speak out against. To protect myself, since I'm well known in my community, and to protect my family from having to hear about the things that I do all the time, I use a professional pseudonym to do work, and keep my private life sacred.
Again, this has nothing to do with being a literary agent.
I've been working with writers and businesses since 2002. But in 2012 I had the chance to work with a literary and film agent. What I learned from that experience was that thousands and thousands of manuscripts would be sent and we would have to reject them.
I doubt it's news to anyone that the majority of submissions are rejected. But there are good reasons for those rejections, and one of the most common is that the writing just isn't good enough to be commercially viable.
I'm a writer, and it broke my heart to see how much money people would spend on SASE, paper, and time on sending to various agents and then get no reply, or not find someone to represent their work to mainstream publishing. I realized that the same business strategies could be used to help writers, and so I decided to leave working with an agent and I opened Platform-Power.
How can your business strategies help the writers whose work was rejected because it wasn't good enough?
What I do is I help writers find the medium that works for their books and writing goals to get them to what they want.
Great! Sign me up! I want to be signed by the big five, become a best-selling author, and earn millions of pounds. How are you going to get me there?
Some it's readers, and they don't want to sign with a mainstream publisher because they want to own all rights and have all control.
I hope you explain to these writers how rights, and control within publishing, actually work. Because this sentence doesn't convince me that you understand these things yourself.
Others want to write and sell their book to a publisher right away. There are so many different goals that I writer has, so I try to help them find what those are and the consequence of each choice.
What do you do to help the writers who aren't good enough, and whose goals are not realistic?
Some writers have used strickly Amazon, or Smashwords. Others have used other publishing means.
What "other publishing means"?
I don't tell them what to choose, I just coach them through the process.
Could you give me an idea of your experience working in trade publishing? Because unless you have a decent amount of such experience under your belt, you're not qualified to coach anyone through this process.
Currently, I have one writer who after working with me for only a few months now has her books in the state libraries, has been invited to be a national speaker for an organization that is dedicated to her subject, and she's is now getting phone calls for radio interviews. I worked with her to moving from a memoir to nonfiction, and we have a mainstream publisher who IS advance paying interested in her book and waiting for the finished manuscript. Because of her book being a memoir, her not being famous, she struggled. Today, she gets over 10K views on her website A DAY.
How many libraries are her books shelved in, exactly? And did she have to hand-sell her books to those libraries, or did you get her books reviewed in the appropriate journals?
Another writer that I coached, that I didn't even charge a penny to, had a manuscript that was good but not as good as it could be, and I loved it. So, I coached him as well. 6 months post release on line, another unknown writer, made #2 of his category for Amazon book sales.
You're talking about two writers here, yes? The one you coached is not the same as the one who reached #2 in his category.
A friend of mine got her self-published e-book to #1 in it's category in the Kindle store by arranging a strong blog-hit on the day of its launch. I've talked to her about it and it didn't take much effort; but the book only remained there for a couple of hours, and soon dropped out of view again. Since then several of our mutual friends have done the same with their books. It's fun being able to call yourself a #1 best-seller but it's only really a big deal if you're #1 in overall sales, and not in your category.
Am I Head of House to No Frills? Yes, I accepted that role June 1st.
It is a direct and obvious conflict of interests for a literary agent to work for a publishing house.
If you charge authors money for using your publishing services, that's a huge red flag.
I love Mark's model and he is a commercial advertiser on my radio talk show. Similar to any public figure that has a company sponsor, I have a professional endorsement relationship with this company.
So No Frills pays you for sending work their way? If this is true, then everyone should be hearing a warning klaxon blaring out now.
What's worked about No Frills and those "covers" someone mentioned. No Frills has writers with great books, and understated covers to give the business impression of don't judge a book by it's cover. (How often does that happen with a writer)
I prefer my publishers to give the business impression of knowing what they are doing, and giving my books professional-looking, great covers.
and what Mark does is he works very hard for his writers to move their books from being published into to actual brick and mortar books stores.
The best way to do this is to acquire good books and publish them well enough to get an account with a distributor. I don't see a distributor account for No Frills.
Once a book has created public demand online, the books then get requested for physical placement in bookstores.
This isn't how it works; and what does No Frills do to ensure its books create that public demand online?
For example, one book that we were told could never sell globally or in the united states because the market was "too small" was recently requested for national distribution by Barnes&Nobles due to demand.
Which title is that?
Amazon.com lists 26 titles that No Frills Buffalo has published. Unless most of those are in Barnes and Noble, you're not doing a good job as a publisher.
The goal is to release the property to a publisher.
You publish dreary books with dreadful covers, sloppy editing and some really slapdash typesetting (I've looked inside several of them on Amazon), you have no distribution, your sales are minimal, and yet you expect them to sell well enough for other publishers to want to take them on?
I think you mean he pays royalties on net. This is not a good sign.
and he does charge for time and cost to cover the book and to print 10 copies that goes into 11 physical stores for the author, as well as place it for them on all e-publishing sites, and do press releases that he writes.
He charges authors for publication? Then he's a vanity publisher.
How does he get those ten copies into those 11 physical bookshops (interesting maths) without a distributor? Do the authors have to do this?
He also attends most major book events in New York, and I attend ones across the country. To me, for $500 that's a true deal for writers, many of which don't even understand what all this involves and end up spending way more, or get really discouraged and drop their dreams all together.
Charging writers $500 for these things is not "a true deal for writers", it's vanity publishing. The authors you "publish" are highly unlikely to ever earn their money back; they could self publish more professional-looking books for far less money than you charge; and judging by the excerpts I've read on Amazon they would be better off finding new dreams to follow--ones which they might succeed at.
As far as the Publishers Marketplace listing. To promote books to mainstream publishing house you have to be an agent, Hence why I have myself listed on Publishers Marketplace that way. I have every book for each author that I coach, and that Mark represents listed there for the purpose of giving them the opportunity they would not have otherwise.
So you're really a vanity publisher masquerading as a literary agent in the hope of attracting a real publisher's attention through Publisher's Marketplace.
Not only is this manipulative and dishonest, it's not going to work.
If you want to sell books to publishers, you need to do some real work. Read Carole Blake's book
From Pitch To Publication to find out how good agents represent their clients. I'll give you a clue: it's not by charging writers money to publish them, then listing their books on websites and waiting for publishers to drop by.
I guess this is a bait and switch routine, but not one that I would call a scam.
If it's a bait-and-switch routine then it
is a scam.
So, to me, I want to encourage all you writers who are working very hard to get an agent, or land a book deal to be very careful who you slander, especially someone well known in the industry. Because it actually could harm you more than help you in achieving your goals.
Luckily, no one in this thread has slandered anyone: as what's been said here is written, and not spoken, they can't have.
And as the discussion is about you, and not about anyone who is "well known in the industry", I don't think anyone is going to find their writing career blighted by having posted in this thread.
Also, remember that you have to have more than just a good book. You have to have a strategy: social media presence, engagement, strong brand, good content, and a great personality --to compete in this new world of publishing
If you have a good enough book you don't need any of that stuff. And if your book isn't good enough then no amount of social media presence will help you.
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To summarise: you charge writers $500 to publish their books very poorly; you masquerade as a literary agent in the vain hope that trade publishers might be persuaded to buy the rights to those books; and when your business model is discussed, you wave around vague threats of slander and industry blacklisting in an attempt to dissuade others from contributing.
I'm not impressed.
